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I really hope the blur on the picture (https://citizenlab.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Hubbard-Image-1.png https://citizenlab.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Hub
by tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
I really hope the blur on the picture (https://citizenlab.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Hubbard-Image-1.png https://citizenlab.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Hubbard-Ima...) isn't hiding anything actually important because that can almost certainly be de-blurred with the right tooling.
- boppo1 5y agoReally? Seems blurred enough to me that even some sort of ML would spit out wrong characters.
- birdyrooster 5y agoNot at all, I can already make out the characters and recognized quickly that all but the last 4 blurred characters are hexadecimal and the last appear to be [a-z][A-Z]
- seba_dos1 5y agoIt's blurred lightly enough for me to be able to tell at least some characters just with my eyes.
- generalizations 5y agoKnown font, known range of possible characters (almost certainly ascii), and probably several blurred characters in there that we know (like the t in attachment). If the blur is differentiable per-character, it's probably reversible.
- warent 5y agoEven without automation. Just make a list of blurred alphanumerics, then match every blurred character in the picture against the character list. with some patience probably doable in a single day
- spicybright 5y agoProbably the most time efficient way to do it tbh.
- ansgri 5y agoThat’s called generative recognition, and it’s the best way to do it (probably can be formally proved under some noise model assumptions) if you have a good model of the data and enough computational resources.
- boppo1 5y agoWhat tools do people use for stuff like this? A python library? C++?
- derac 5y agoYou don't need ml. If you know the font and blurring algorithm (or a close approximation), you blur all letters of the font at that size and compare output.
- dan-robertson 5y agoMost of the time, blurring is down with a Gaussian blur and this is, in theory, reversible. In practice what is actually done is round_to_fraction_over_256(gaussian_blur(point, image, …)) so there is an error in the unblurring process. But this error is often not insurmountable, especially with extra information.
- lmilcin 5y agoActually, if you can identify the exact font and exact location of each letter (as is in this case) it doesn't matter what kind of blur it is. If you assume the photo was made with one of the consumer applications, there are only so many popular bluring algorithms. You can brute force it quite easily by testing each character and each type of blur until you get exact match (and in many cases even inexact will suffice).
- peanut_worm 5y agoman why do people even take the gamble of using a blur just use a opaque box
- smoldesu 5y agoA certain subset of hackers have had a Gaussian-blur fetish for half a decade now, at least.
- qqtt 5y agoOpaque boxes have been issues before, when they end up being "semi-transparent" and you can up the brightness to beat them. Safest is probably just to cut/crop the sensitive bits out.
- Breza 5y agoThis is how I get FOIA responses. Agencies just remove the pieces they don't want me to see, sometimes with a code to tell me why it was excised. I use the redaction feature built into Acrobat.
- raxxorrax 5y agoThe information is lost if you have a flat image without any layers. You should take additional steps for other formats of course. Granted, it has to be completely opaque of course.
- warent 5y agoLife imitates art I suppose! You don't see opaque boxes used in Hollywood productions. Blur matches a popular fantasy aesthetic
- samstave 5y agoPerhaps 'someone' wanted it blurred for exactly the reason they want to de-blur it later....
- geoduck14 5y agoI've used blur in the past. I assumed it was just as secure (please don't hate me!). I did blur over black box because the blur was less visually obtrusive
- booleandilemma 5y agoThose strings in the center look like UUIDs.
- csomar 5y agoWhat's even worse is that he blurred "ts/" from "attachments", kinda to give you a hint on how to de-blurr.
- tablespoon 5y ago> I really hope the blur on the picture (https://citizenlab.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Hubbard-Ima https://citizenlab.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Hubbard-Ima...) isn't hiding anything actually important because that can almost certainly be de-blurred with the right tooling. Yeah, the right way to use blurring is to mockup a lookalike for content you want to hide, then blur the mockup.
- Stupulous 5y agoYou don't even need this. I searched "unblur" in Google Play Store, downloaded the first result, tweaked the settings a touch, and I could make out the characters. The whole process took a couple minutes. If the data actually needs to be hidden, this picture should be taken down.
- notyourwork 5y agoIt sounds like you didn’t read the post you are replying to. They indicated a mock copy should be made to avoid techniques reconstructing the data.
- Stupulous 5y agoYeah, I replied to the wrong comment, sorry. I navigated away and skimmed to figure out where I was when I came back.
- deserted 5y agoif you generate a lookalike full of UUIDs, you don't really need to blur except for dramatic effect I guess.
- fabianhjr 5y agoI just go solid opaque bar. Way easier to do and harder to screw up.
- tablespoon 5y ago
- flatiron 5y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Paul_Neil https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Paul_Neil Pedo who used to swirl his face not knowing people can unswirl.